Author(s): Joao Chambel; Arunjyoti Sarkar; Mohd Ishtiyak; Tiago Fazeres-Ferradosa; Paulo Rosasantos; Francisco Taveira-Pinto
Linked Author(s): Paulo Rosa-Santos, Francisco Taveira Pinto
Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: As the offshore wind sector sets new goals concerning the installed capacity in Europe, it becomes evident the need to implement offshore wind farms in ambitious locations with large wind energy potential. Often, such locations are characterized by larger water depths and longer distances to shore. While offshore wind floating foundations are yet to reach a mature state of development, the standard monopile foundations, which are the most commonly used, struggle to be applicable for water depths above 30 m (Fazeres-Ferradosa et al., 2019). Additionally, floating solutions are typically suitable for water depths above 60 m or more (Ishtiyak et al., 2021). A key problem of using bottom fixed foundations, as monopiles, jackets, gravity-based foundations and others is that for water depths between 30 to 50 m, they tend to become rather massive in dimensions and footprint. This not only increases the foundation’s costs, but it also raises challenges in the construction, transport and installation. Recently, the Bottom Supported Tension Leg Tower (BSTLT) with inclined tethers for offshore wind turbines has been developed and validated (Sarkar and Gudmestad, 2017; Ishtiyak et al., 2021). This concept enables the application of monopile foundations in water depths up to 50 m, without the need to significantly increase its diameter. Hence, the BSTLT provides an interesting alternative for intermediate water depths. This study briefly looks into the bending moment of the BSTLT concept in comparison with the standard monopile case. Preliminary results show that from the BSTLT generally performs efficiently for water depths of 50 m and has potential to extend the standard monopile foundation to transitional/intermediate water depths.
Year: 2022